Tag Archives: Facebook marketing

IKEA is a furniture and design marvel. Everything in IKEA screams to me: “Buy me! I am amazing! I am cheap! I look great! You need me!”. I love IKEA like I love chocolate. It’s an addiction. And I know I am not alone when it comes to IKEA love.

So, if you’re an IKEA lover like me, are female (sorry boys!) and live in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, then you may be excited about IKEA’s latest Facebook competition: Spend the Night at IKEA.

Spend the night with friends, fun and whole lot of furniture. You and a friend could win the chance to be part of a girls-only sleepover in your local IKEA store!

For the first time ever in Australia, on Friday March 25th in Sydney and Saturday 26th March in Brisbane and Melbourne, flatpack fans are invited to spend the night in their local IKEA store and enjoy a night of chick flicks, pampering and waiter service from handsome men.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I remember watching a movie in primary school about a group of school kids accidentally locked in a department store and the shenanigans they got up to during the night. Ever since then I have had a desire to be locked inside a store and be left to my own devices. This IKEA competition reminds me of that movie!

If you like the idea of being locked inside an IKEA store with either furniture, handsome men or both, and want to enter the competition (or see a great marketing example run through the social networking site), visit IKEA’s Australian Facebook page.

“How do I grow the fanbase so more people are engaged and have exposure to the brand?” Every Marketer asks themselves this question when they’re working to build a brand through social network sites.

First, you need to be clear on the rules for promoting a brand through Facebook. From a marketer’s perspective, we recommend reading the Facebook Promotions Guidelines. If you’re across these rules you’ll have a better chance of not getting on the wrong side of Facebook (and in turn get banned, as that wouldn’t be good for the brand you’re promoting!).

There are two main ways to get fans on Facebook:

1)Be likeable

The first way is to become a celebrity or have a well known brand people which people will actively seek out and become a fan as a way of affiliating themselves. In these categories, generally there is no issue in how to get fans. All you need to do is post regular updates and information that’s engaging to fans to keep you top of mind. This will help organically grow a fan base (as when your fans interact with your page, this interaction is spread virally to their Facebook friends). Justin Bieber is famous and has an astounding 21,849,746 Facebook fans and Gucci is a great well known brand that has 3,791,867 Facebook fans.

2) Incentivise

The second way is to have some kind of incentive to ‘like’ your brand. I know this sounds simple and is basic marketing, but there are many ways, and some very creative, to do this. Here are some ideas you could try:

• Give people a discount or a prize for being a fan on Facebook. They could be weekly draws, like: ‘Mention the special Facebook code when you come in store’ etc.

• Give them something special to engage with once they have liked you. For example, once you become a fan of Barbie on Facebook, you can shop at the exclusive pop-up store in NYC.

• If you have a specific product or service, now is the time to engage with your target market with helpful information, feedback or news from the industry.

A bit of coding goes a long way

Customise a tab in Facebook to act like a landing page where you can create a call to action, sell something or create some intrigue. You can be really creative with this page as it acts a little like a mini website on Facebook and only requires some simple coding.

Engagment ads on Facebook

At Brio Group we have had a lot of success with Facebook advertising. It can be really specific and you can limit your spend with a pay per 1000 impressions or pay per click (like AdWords). It’s a great way to build awareness to your new product or service, or to build up fans for your brand or product before you launch. If done well this can be one of the most cost effective advertising strategies you will do. I always advise that when advertising on Facebook remember people are expecting something for FREE or really cheap so promote discounts, giveaways, tell your fans about your competition, etc. Then make sure to link to your customised landing page where there are more details, or a custom tab on your Facebook Page – never just sent them to the Facebook wall.

Appoint a Facebook account manager

My final tip is to get an account manager if you’re really serious with your Facebook Advertising. They will be only too happy to help you work with Facebook to approve competitions, create effective ads and help you get the most of the latest developments from Facebook.